1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to the formation of a foundation for card clothing to be used on a carding engine for woolen spinning and special spinning and and also for a raising machine.
2. Prior Art
Conventionally, a foundation for card clothing is manufactured in the following way. As shown in FIG. 1, a plurality of layers of woven fabric 1 of cotton, linen or synthetic fiber are bonded together with a natural rubber adhesive 2 in a standard thickness and a surface layer 3 of rubber, felt, resin sheet or the like is bonded to the above base layer with a synthetic rubber adhesive 4. The foundation fabric thus made is fitted with carding wires as card clothing, which is wound round a cylinder, a doffer, etc. of a carding engine for opening and carding fibers. Since this card clothing is wound round a cylinder and others which revolve at a high speed for carding fibers, it is required to have considerable strength and to support firmly carding wires fitted thereto. Therefore, the following characteristics are required for a card clothing.
(1) It has uniform thickness and high tensile strength.
(2) It extends only slight under tension and can be tightly wound round a rotary cylindrical body, such as a cylinder.
(3) It has enough carding wire supporting force to resist loads applied to carding wires during a carding operation and sufficient elastic force to assist the recovery of the carding wires from deformation.
In order to meet the requirements of the above characteristics, it is the usual practice to apply gum prepared by solving natural rubber or synthetic rubber in an organic solvent, such as gasoline, benzene, etc., several times to a woven fabric of linen, cotton, etc. having a high tensile strength and small extension so that the fabric is impregnated with gum and a gum layer of constant thickness is formed. This gum layer serves to maintain the elastic force of the foundation for card clothing and improves the supporting force of the carding wires. Also, for the purpose of buffering the stress applied to carding wires, a rubber sheet layer, a foamed rubber layer, a resin sheet layer, a foamed resin layer or a felt layer is provided at the surface to impart softness, elasticity and buffering properties to the foundation.
In the case of a conventional foundation for card clothing, in order to meet the requirements of various physical properties, it uses costly woolen felt or is subjected to a laminating process, with repeated applications of gum and use of woven fabrics of natural fiber, such as cotton or linen. Therefore, it involves high manufacturing costs.
Some of the conventional foundations for card clothing use at least one layer of non-woven fabric, but as the non-woven fabric is low in density and is easily deformed by compressing, such foundations are creased easily and raises problems when fitting carding wires thereto. Thus, such foundations involve the disorder of carding wire rows and adhesion in the compressed and deformed state when laminating, with resultant irregularity of thickness. Moreover, since the non-woven fabric is low in strength, satisfactory tearing strength and satisfactory elongation at constant stretching cannot be obtained, even if it is used in combination with cotton woven fabric and polyester woven fabric.
In the present invention, an intertwined fiber mat, namely, a needle punch felt or a foamed needle punch felt is used for a surface layer and a base layer of carding clothing for use on a carding engine and a raising machine for woolen spinning, special spinning, etc. and the base layer is reinforced by lamination, for example, by laminating a synthetic fiber woven fabric on one side and a natural fiber woven fabric on the other side or laminating of one or plural layers of natural fiber woven fabric on both sides. Such foundation for card clothing will meet the requirements of various characteristics mentioned above and is comparatively low in cost.